Tell Congress: Resume critical humanitarian programs now!

The Trump administration abruptly halted vital assistance to refugees and vulnerable people around the world, exacerbating the already critical global refugee crisis.

Please ask your members of Congress to urge the State Department to resume funding to humanitarian assistance and reinstate the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has been shut down. Essential programs that provide clean water, shelter, medical care, and other critical services have already been suspended around the world. If we don’t act now, the U.S. will be abandoning millions of people to face exploitation, violence, and hunger.

Take action today and tell your elected officials that we refuse to turn our backs on refugees and displaced people.

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Dear {contact_data~salutation},

As your constituent, I am reaching out to ask you to do everything in your power to save the lifesaving U.S. refugee resettlement program and foreign aid programs that have been suspended by the Trump administration in recent days.

These actions are already causing harm to millions of people - in our own community and around the world.

Secretary of State Rubio has said that “every policy we pursue must make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.” Cutting basic services to support refugees and conflict-affected people won’t do any of these things. On the contrary, it is likely to cost lives, destabilize some of the most dangerous places on earth, and destroy the trust and credibility of the United States in the eyes of millions of people around the world.

Humanitarian and development assistance accounts for a fraction of one percent of the federal budget. But for the people whose lives it touches, it so often means the difference between life and death.

In addition, right now, the U.S. refugee resettlement program has stopped with no new arrivals allowed to come through this safe, orderly and legal program. Also, because of the recent stop work orders that refugee serving organizations recently received, refugees who recently arrived in the U.S. after undergoing strict security and medical checks no longer have steady access to the support that they were promised during their first 90 days in their new communities. The stoppage of these services also affects Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders, individuals who risked their lives to support the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

Without the ability to provide these services to the refugees and SIVs who legally arrived in our city and state, we run the very real risk of these new arrivals facing homelessness and dire food insecurity. Not only does this stop work order cause hardship for our new neighbors, but it will also negatively impact the wider community. For example, they will no longer have the built-in support that helps them find early employment opportunities in local businesses, and they will be forced to turn to local resources for needed support when the refugee resettlement agencies are sidelined because of the stop-work orders.

I therefore request that you reach out to Secretary Rubio and urge him to immediately:

- Revoke the stop work orders for foreign assistance and R&P services for all eligible populations, including refugees and certain SIVs, to enable the mandated foreign assistance review to proceed without impacting ongoing aid programs.

- Reverse course by excluding the R&P program from the definition of “foreign development assistance”, as used in the President’s Executive Order on “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid."

- Alternatively, as described in section 3(d) of the President’s Executive Order on foreign aid, grant a waiver allowing for the immediate resumption in R&P services for all eligible populations. Encourage the President to rescind the Executive Order on the USRAP, signed and implemented on January 22nd, resulting in immediate suspension of the U.S. resettlement program and cancellation of flights for refugees who were already booked for travel. Until the USRAP resumes full operations, the administration should at least provide for the resettlement of particularly vulnerable refugees or those with urgent needs on a case-by-case basis, as provided by the Executive Order.

Thank you for taking all of this into consideration.

Sincerely,

{user_data~First Name}
{user_data~City}, {user_data~State}

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Tell Congress: Resume critical humanitarian programs now!

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